The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It provides a way to record and transfer data that is transparent, safe, audible and resistant to outages. The blockchain has the ability to make the organizations that use it transparent, democratic, efficient, secure and decentralized.

The blockchain will disrupt many industries in the next 5 to 10 years. These are some of the industries it’s already disrupting.

1 – Banking

The most obvious industry thats being changed is the banking industry. There is a theory that the blockchain will do what the internet has done media. Blockchain technology can be used to give billions of people around the world access to financial services. Currencies like Bitcoin let anyone send money with low fees and pretty much instantly. Banks are investing in blockchain projects and start ups too.

2 – Cyber Security

Although the blockchain is public, the data is encrypted. The data has to be verified and encrypted with advanced cryptography. This means the data can’t be meddled with if you don’t have authorization. There have been loads of attempted hacks already.

3 – Supply Chain management

Blockchain technology can greatly reduce time delays and human errors too. It’s also great when used to monitor costs, labor, waste, and emissions at every point of the supply chain.

4 – Networking

Having your data on a centralized server would be extremely vulnerable to hacks, data loss or human error. However, if you had technology that lets cloud storage to be more secure and robust against attacks then you would be doing good. Good thing we’ve got blockchain technology then isn’t it! Check out Storj,

5 – Private Transport

The blockchain can allow users to arrange the terms and conditions for transportation in a secure way without third parties knowing.

6 – Music

The music industry has taken a big hit in the recent years. There are so many cuts and commissions involved in the music industry that when the artist receives their share they’re getting the crumbs. There are server start-ups appearing that are coming up with new ideas so musicians get paid directly from their fans. Just now musicians have to give up a large chunk of their sales to platforms or record companies.

Smart contracts can also be used, this will make licensing issues easier to solve and will help catalog songs with their original creators easier too.

7 – Real Estate

Blockchain technology can speed up transactions by reducing the paper based record keeping you see in today’s real estate market. This is also much safer, can help with tracking, ensures the accuracy of documents, helps verify the ownership and makes transferring property deeds much much easier too. Overall blockchain technology will revolutionize the Real Estate market.

Less developed countries will most likely pick this up first but I’d say in the next 10 years or so it will become the standard. This will reduce legal, accounting and transaction cost too and most of all reduce fraud.

Blockchain technology is in its early stages and there are a lot of potential legal problems that can arise. Until industries have a solid grasp on the new technologies and practicies its best to keep yourself in the loop by talking to an expert like Goodwin Law.

I started Vlogging my trips a while back and its became an addiction! an addiction thats got me hundreds of hours of footage and made me spend hours on hours of editing but I truly love it now!

My memories in Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, London, Lisbon, Madrid, New York have all been captured and the memories captured in Footage are 10000 times better than pictures!

Its encouraged me to do things I’ve not done before, its made me more confident and I’ve found myself achieving more because I guess I somehow feel like someones keeping me accountable. The boat ride I never really wanted to go on in Turkey turned out to be the best day I had in 2015! The restaurant that looked kinda shady in London tasted Amazing! The sky diving I booked and I was that scared right up until the point where he counted down from 3 and pushed u on two because most people hold on at 1 is one of the best videos I have. The sense of freedom you get sky diving is all captured on camera!

It makes you care less about what other people think of you and this is great, its difficult filming yourself talking to a camera on the street at first but it does get easier! The more you do it the better your vlogs will become and I think most people these days are used to the idea of someone recording on the streets too so you won’t get too many funny looks.

It will make you notice the little beautiful things in life, you’ll start seeing more and start smiling more!

Is 3d printing changing the way we do stop motion filming?

Stop-motion animation is an art! Humans have been making clay figures for a long time and filming them one frame at a time has been around since the start of the cinema. One of my favourite producers – Laika have definitely mastered the art of stop motion.

They have created figures with more than 20,000 heads and figures that were so huge(18 foot) that to lift one of its boney fingers required a lot of planning.

Replacement animation basically means they use different facial expressions to create a model that has more emotions. The more models they have the more emotion and control they have over the character. Animators fabricate hundreds of heads as an example so they can make the character smile, look angry etc etc This can end up with hundreds of different models. Now traditional stop motion is done by using clay and moulds which u can imagine takes a LOT of time and human error is always possible.

However Laika always take it to the next level. They made over 20,000 heads for Coraline, 52,000 for the Box Trolls and for Kubo and the Two Strings they created more than 22 million expressions. Now they wouldn’t of been able to do all this without the use of 3d Printing. Laika are getting more used to using 3d printers so they can create 22 million facial expressions with beautiful translucent colours. They achieved this by bringing in a team of external programmers to help with the job.

The team for Kubo and the Two strings mastered the art of rapid prototyping and 3d printing for smaller stop motion puppets. They didn’t think they would be able to manage it for their 18 foot Giant Skeleton though.. until they found a company that could print high density foam into any form!

Stop motion filming is mental anyways – imagine creating an entire film one frame at a time. The patience you need for something like this is on a whole different level.

A few properties in my street have installed dummy alarm boxes or dummy cameras as there has been a rise in break ins recently. Its too soon to tell if they’re proving to be worth it but I am considering getting one so I’ve looked into the facts and reviews online and heres my thoughts.

Dummy cameras and alarms are actually really cheap and can be picked up at your local homeware store usually. A report from Axa Business Insurance says only 9% of rental properties that have been burgled had alarms installed and 26% had external locks on doors and windows.

Other than these reports it is really hard to see how effective fake cameras and alarms are. A number of reformed burglars reveal their tricks of the trade to help police and heres a report i found of one. “We always want to be in and out as quickly as possible and ALWAYS try avoid confrontation. So we avoid properties with alarms and CCTV as it just causes extra hassle” This would obviously suggest that visible CCTV or Alarms is a good thing.

However your insurance providers seem to think that skilled burglars can spot the fakes easily. Adding a real alarm can actually bring your insurance premium now if it is monitored.

Heres a tip for people moving into a new area and looking into their insurance. If your insurer insists on having an alarm on their home insurance policy then there is definitely a reason behind it. Usually this means they’ve experienced a high number of burglaries in your area.

Personally I’m getting the real ones – I don’t want to pretend i feel safe, whereas knowing I’ve definetely got the cameras and got the alarm will just make me feel more secure. I don’t want to risk everything on whether or not the burglar knows what their doing or not.

If you know your history then you’ll know that club DJs were made in the 70s. The DJs back then would play from the moment the club opened until the very last second when the lights came on and people had the worst feeling every clubber knows. The shock and sadness as you realise that you need to return back to reality.. The DJs back then would take crowds on a path, a journey.. and introduce them to new music.

You have Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc, DJ Grand Wizard Theodore, David Mancuso, Nicky Siano.. then you have the guys who started chicago house.. Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles twisted basslines and rhythms of disco, synth pop, r&B and created something raw and fresh… Ron Hardy came to fame in Knuckles club The Power Plant and people loved him… He was known for playing an energetic style..

Back then the DJs were linked to the clubs they played at and pretty much defined those clubs. You think of the warehouse and you think Frankie Knuckles. You think of The Paradise Garage and you think of Larry Levan. Fabric and you think of Craig Richards…

Now DJs are mostly known for the club nights they play at.. David Guetta – known for F*ck Me I’m Famous etc etc but they’re known for playing at every festival, guest slots at other peoples clubs. I mean really… theres only so much u can do with hour long slots. Everything these days is about quick thrills, big drops, instant pleasure… The only guys that are doing somewhat of a decent job are your techno-heads, disco lovers and anything that falls in between the two.

Some sets are over and done with in 30 minutes and as a DJ I can say that is utterly pointless… i wouldn’t even get out of bed to play a set at the biggest club for 30 minutes. Just pointless.

All this three, four headliner nonsense too just winds me up. Naturally every one of them want to stand out more than the other so they all play big hitters and this doesn’t help towards the problem at all.

I’m sure you’ve heard someone say vinyls back or maybe you’ve seen someone post it the new records they’ve bought on Facebook. It’s becoming cool to collect records again and more youngsters are buying them. More modern artists are getting records pressed like ED Sheeran or Little mix.

So did vinyl make of a comeback or did it even leave? I’ve worked in a record shop and know plenty of music lovers who have some of the best and biggest collections I’ve seen and heres my views on the whole Vinyl Revival phenomenon.

Since the early 2000s we’ve seen new devices come into the market a lot with the biggest change happening in 2005 when then Ipod Nano got released. As you can imagine people loved this and they took a big boom, then came Grooveshark in 2006. Pandora also started picking up about this time and rose to the top pretty quickly, Pandora had been around since early 2000s though! and eventually Spotify made its appearance in 2008.

Throughout all this we had Itunes, we’ve had Beatport and more and more people bought a song online for £0.50-£1.20. We’ve also had CDs through this too. So if you look at all of these different pieces of software and these companies you’ll see a slowly dying trend for digital downloads and the increase of music streaming software. Though while all this has been happening, we’ve barely heard about Vinyl at all but it never actually went anywhere. IF it did and the vinyl revival is a thing then we can safely say its just about been revived. Record sales have been on the increase since 93.

The past five or six years might seem like there has been a big boom but the reason you’re probably seeing more and more artists producing records etc pushing vinyl now is because people are realising the digital download is starting to die out. I say its got about two years left – if that. The music industry is a bubble itself.

Record Store Day is getting bigger every year, the vinyl culture is mature and fully fledged.

Record sales have seen a 260% growth since 2009! in fact vinyl suppliers are actually having a hard time keeping up with the demand. When I worked at the record store one of my jobs was to order in stock from one of our suppliers – we had 8. They released weekly lists of their stock. I phoned up one of our bigger suppliers to make orders off of it on the Monday and they had sold out of everything. A large record shop from Germany phoned up and bought it all. This was the only time this happened but getting a call or email back from a supplier to say they don’t have the records in stock was a common occurrence.

Pretty mental that all the digital inventions (mp3 players, Ipods, Streaming applications… hell even portable cd players) that brough you music anywhere anytime are basically dying on deaths door compared to vinyl now? People love seeing the records that they can display, touch, feel… Starting a collection is just as great as playing the music itself and I think every vinyl collector will have mutual feelings.

You’ll probably find the artist themselves (more so independent artists) will makes more from record sales as opposed to digital download. Especially small bands, artists who order small runs of 2-300.. it gives them something physical to sell.

Are you still looking to keep up with the hipsters out there and get yourself a turntable? check out Maplin and use this Maplin Promo Code. They’ve got a tonne of record players!